Fixmo Tools for BlackBerry Smartphones Review

Why is it that we are never satisfied? Why do we look for the slightest chance to improve upon something? Perhaps we have a built in desire to consistently outperform; the need to make something faster, smarter…better. It won’t happen in our lifetime, or even in the next few lifetimes, but I would love to see when humanity finally reaches the ultimate pinnacle of perfection and a single thought is collectively voiced;

“So, um, what do we do now?”

In a world, where existence relies upon constant communication, the human race cries out for more. With BlackBerry in hand, we march towards a common goal; to augment our already amazing Smartphones. Staring at the vast world of BlackBerry applications, one must decide how they will choose. One application dares to state that it will make your “Smartphone smarter”. That application is Fixmo Tools. Comparing itself to a utility belt, Fixmo Tools seems to strive on the idea of prevention over apprehension. In other words, easily monitor important concerns such as; memory, battery life and email issues. It’s a great way to quickly draw attention to critical information when you might have forgotten something. Let’s see Fixmo Tools in action.

About Fixmo Tools

Fixmo Tools is brought you by Fixmo Inc; a company looking to improve upon a users experience with their Smartphone. You may remember, near the end of last year, a call was put out on CrackBerry for Fixmo Tools beta testers. A couple of months later, it was officially released and has become quickly adopted. According to Fixmo Inc, the application is available for the following models:

Storm and Storm 2

Bold 9000 and 9700

Tour 9630

88xx series

Curve series (83xx, 85xx, 8900)

If you are using an 88xx or 83xx BlackBerry, make sure you are running OS 4.5. The version I have currently is 1.02, which requires 818KB. For Storm users, it is recommended that you disable compatibility mode for optimal experience.

Main Menu

I can see how they would refer to Fixmo Tools as a utility belt, as the application does have many, um, applications (for lack of a better word). It’s a collection of useful tools designed to aid you when managing your emails, profiles (to a very limited extent) and the status of your device. It is true that some of the functionality is present on your BlackBerry already, but to quote Keegan-Michael Key, Fixmo Tools takes it to a “Ho’ Nuva Levo”. Some of the included tools can be accessed outside of the main menu of Fixmo Tools. Here’s a look at the current set of available tools:

Undelete

This tool is the perfect response to “Oh no, no NO! I didn’t just delete that!” Fixmo Tools will bring you to a page that will display your most recently deleted emails, calendar entries, PIN messages, tasks and memos. This list is limited to the 50 most recent items, which are separated by date; much like your native Messages application. While this can be incredibly handy, Fixmo cannot guarantee to recover every piece of information. Attachments and emails over 2kb - that were deleted from the BlackBerry and the server - will not be recovered. Fixmo works quite well with the native BlackBerry calendar but, understandably, it will not work third party calendar applications. Undelete can be accessed through the Fixmo Tools menu or from the menu in your messages folder.

Flame Retardant

Ah yes, nothing spreads fire like an inappropriate email. I’ve seen people learn of their termination through a message sent to them by accident. This tool is designed to scan and warn of potentially harmful emails before you send them out. Flame Retardant is broken up into four filters:

Offensive Words: not everyone wants to read the f-bomb when checking their email. Fixmo Tools allows you to set up warnings if your email contains a naughty word from their “standard list” or words of your own.

Repeated Punctuation: Yes I understand your excitement after you closed a big deal you’ve been working on, but it’s not really professional if you use three exclamation marks in your email. This feature warns if you use 3 or more “!” or “?” in your message.

Words in all capitals: I DON’T KNOW ABOUT YOU, BUT I REALLY HATE READING EMAILS THAT LOOK LIKE THIS. I DON’T LIKE ALL OF THIS SHOUTING. IS IT NOISY WHERE YOU ARE EMAILING FROM? ARE YOU REALLY, REALLY ANGRY? THIS FEATURE WILL RECOGNIZE IF A GROUP OF 3 OR MORE WORDS ARE ALL CAPITALIZED.

Unintended Recipients: “No I wasn’t talking about you sir, I was talking about my friend’s boss whose name is also Mr. Smith, who also works for us.”
A warning will be given if your email contains a new domain in a reply or forward or if the email you are replying to wasn’t directed at you specifically (you were BCC’d).

If you can't stand the heat...

Silencer

There’s nothing like your BlackBerry going off in the middle of a very important meeting. This feature will hush alerts for incoming calls during calendar events that you have marked as busy. I discovered that this can be ignored if you type “nosilence” in the location field. This feature also allows you to set a quick silence option, that can last between 15 minutes and 4 hours. This quick silence option can also be assigned to one of your convenience keys.

ssshh

Forward/Reply With Edit

This feature is actually accessible from the messages folder and is my favourite so far. You can edit the original message before you reply to it or forward it. This is a great way of sharing only pertinent information with other recipients. This feature does not allow you to forward attachments so easily however. You have to save them first, then reattach later on.

Battery Watch

Yes, your BlackBerry will easily display your power level at the top of your screen, but it doesn’t tell you much about your battery. From this feature, you can manage your connections (network, WiFi, etc) and view details. These details include: voltage, battery temperature (c and f) and estimated remaining time (you are able to see the remaining talk time, audio/video time, standby time and Internet time). You can also choose to be alerted when your battery level drops below a certain level. Multiple alerts can be set up, allowing you to be notified when it drops below 50%, 25%, 15%, 10% or 5%.

battery life

setting battery alerts

Memory Monitor

I wish I had this for my brain. This feature offers two views; the first will actively display the percentage of RAM and Device Memory made available, not the total memory. The details section will use a pie chart (mmm…pie) to show how the memory is currently being allocated and where. Fixmo Tools also included a handy Clear Cache button in order to recover as much memory as possible.

Memory

Conclusion

Fixmo Tools is one of those applications that, once set up, will add some much needed functionality, especially with the Flame Retardant and Forward/Reply with Edit features. It’s those things that you don’t necessarily think about, until you realize it, that make the difference. The more you can automate, the more you can accomplish. Fixmo Tools is on the pricey side, with a price tag of $19.99. They do offer a 15 day trial period to help you decide if this application is for you.

Reader comments

Fixmo Tools for BlackBerry Smartphones Review

The free versions won't activate for testing purposes if you're on BES. I contacted the vendor a week or more ago and have yet to receive a response. Pretty poor customer service for a fairly expensive (in BB terms) piece of software.

I've been seeing lots of BB software popping up recently that has fairly obvious and known bugs. One of the advantages of BB is that it is a stable platform and I hate to see buggy software ruin the BB reputation.

We certainly apologize for not responding more promptly. Would you be able to re-send your email to our support team (support@fixmo.com) and we'll ensure we respond as soon as possible.

We have fully tested our products on a range of BlackBerry devices - those both associated to BES servers and those that are not. We are aware of certain steps that may need to be taken for BES phones (see our FAQ for one here that may help: http://www.fixmo.com/support/faq#ssl-connections), and are always happy to help users in any way we can.

Again, we are very sorry and look forward to quickly resolving any questions or issues.

I've been using this app for a while,it has become one of my most used app. I really like the issues "Send Feedback" ability, it lets the developers see what is happening with the app, especially if a bug is noticed. The developers respond very quickly, they are a model other developers should follow.

$20.00 ??? Really?!? I personally would have only used 2-3 of the features (most are not features that are in high demand at all.) So I searched around and within 5 minutes had 3 apps that all totaled $6.00 CDN. These 3 apps are still smaller than the large useless, overpriced app that they call Fixmo. Stop being greedy and try giving blackberry users something they can use for a reasonable price instead of trying to ripoff the few that will buy into this useless app. I wish you no success with this application whatsoever.

Great app. And i use it quite a bit. As far as price goes, it's cheaper than $20 bucks if you buy it from the crackberry store. i think now it's $15, but i have seen it as low as $10. As far as customer service goes, I've had no problems whatsoever. always get responses within a day.

I tested this when it first came out but decided it was not worth it for me. I already have apps, like meterberry, that does much of what I was using this for. It looked like a fine app, just not for me.

The silencer and Edit features are great. The rest is stuff I never used.
I tried the Betas - first was OK , second caused battery drain, lockup, and other issues. My friend (9700)had downloaded at the same time and he had the same experience as I did on my Storm 2.
So $19.99 or $14.99 for two Apps - I can gladly live with out. I did really like the Silencer though.

One thing not mentioned in the review is that Undelete will work with deleted contacts. That feature has saved my butt when I accidentally deleted some important contacts, I didn't have to embrace my self asking for it again.

As an avid BB user and crackberry addict I can understand some of the comments here about the price point of this app. But in retrospect one never knows how much something is worth until they really need it. The undelete feature of this app alone has saved me well over the cost of the app in terms of accidently deleted emails or contacts that I needed recovered to complete the days business. The Quick Silence feature has also been quite handy when headed into a meeting with a prospective clients. I have always found it somewhat rude to be constantly having to stop a conversation to answer a call or message. The forward/reply with edit feature works seamlessly with your inbox and makes forwarding and replying to messages that need editing quick and simple. Flame retardant in and of itself is also very useful for those times when you are a little frustrated with things. Having all of these features, as well as a memory and battery manager bundled into one app is quite appealing to me as I am constantly looking to keep this BB running top notch without any slow downs. Having a multitude of apps for these simple actions makes no sense to me and definitely tends to slow down the BB's performance. With all of these things in mind I would say $20 for an app isn't such a bad price. Many of us have spent well over that amount on the phone in hand so relatively speaking this amount is chump change.

Nice app but while I had it installed on my Storm 2 it caused my Storm 2 to lag quite a bit. Whether it was loadinig web pages or typing, it got so bothersome I had to uninstall Fixmo. Once I did that my Storm went back to normal.

We're sorry to hear this - would be able to send an email to support@fixmo.com so we can get more information about the lag that may help our developers track down and diagnose what could be happening?

I like the app
I got a free copy of it because I was a beta tester and the developer team was really great about helping me when I switched phones from a Bold 9000 to a Bold 9700 and transferring the license.
I still wonder if I can upgrade my version or not or if this license is only good for the version I have due to my beta tester status.

Some suggestions for the app:
QuickSilence - I love it I just wish I had more control over it specifically in that the definition of how long/short an event can be in the calendar before quicksilence auto-silences it. It starts at 3 hours and then jumps from 3 hours to 6 hours. Personally, I would love to have options that are less and I suppose to look at it in a non-selfish light more options in the middle of 3-6hrs and beyond.

If you're using your BlackBerry what its meant to be used for, then this application is for you, BlackBerry is not a toy, its for business on the go, if you want a toy get an iPhone. $20 is not that much for a set of great applications that come in handy when you need them.

i tested this when it was in beta and got a free license when it was released

dont use it that much however

forward and edit can be found for free online
memory monitor is ok but is only used to do memory cleaning, which is on the BlackBerry anyways
silencer i dont use
undelete is handy but sure can find this app for a couple of bucks elsewhere
battery monitor is cool but i have a free one of those, its called the battery meter!

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